A fire and chemical explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant in a small town north of Waco, Texas, sent at least 180 people to hospitals, flattened homes and prompted widespread evacuations.

The blast Wednesday evening at the West Fertilizer Plant in West, Texas, killed an estimated five to 15 people, said Sgt. William Patrick Swanton of the Waco Police Department, who was relaying information to the media.

"I know that's a rough estimate," Swanton told reporters, "but that's the best that I can give you."

PHOTOS: Explosion Rips Through Texas Fertilizer Plant

West EMS Director Dr. George Smith, himself injured and bloody, said that though he had not personally seen bodies to confirm deaths, he believed the blast killed at least two emergency responders to a fire at the plant before the initial explosion and a person at a nearby apartment complex that suffered serious damage.

In addition, some responders to the fire before the explosion were believed unaccounted for, according to Smith, Swanton and West Mayor Tommy Muska.

Officials early this morning still were going door-to-door searching for survivors in the blast zone.

They were treating the site of the explosion as a crime scene.

"We are not indicating that it is a crime but we don't know," Swanton said. "What that means to us is that until we know that it is an industrial accident we will work it as a crime scene. ATF [the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] is conducting the main investigation."

Concerns about potentially dangerous ammonia fumes emanating from the plant were subsiding this morning as fires died down, Swanton said before 6 a.m. ET, despite a forecast of shifting winds that could have spread fumes in new directions today.

Witnesses reported heavy fire or concussive damage to a middle school, homes and an apartment complex near the plant, as well as to a nursing home, where more than 130 residents were evacuated, according to Muska.

Buildings in a radius of about five blocks around the plant -- including perhaps 75 or more homes -- were heavily damaged by the blast, officials said.

"It was almost tornadic in effect," Swanton said. "It looked like to me one home would be fine and next to it there would be extreme devastation."

State Trooper D.L. Wilson of the Texas Department of Public Safety described the initial fertilizer plant blast as "massive -- just like Iraq, just like the Murray Building in Oklahoma City. The same kind of hydrous [ammonia] exploded, so you can imagine what kind of damage we're looking at."

The blast even registered as a 2.1 magnitude seismic event, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

It was felt 20 to 30 miles away, witnesses said, and near the plant burned buildings, knocked down people, blew out windows and, according to Wilson, left the damaged apartment complex looking like "just a skeleton standing up."

"It's total chaos," West City Councilwoman Cheryl Marak said soon after the blast, according to ABC News Radio. "There's ambulances and fire trucks and police cars from everywhere."

Marak told ABC News that the explosion killed her pet dog and destroyed her house approximately 2 1/2 blocks from the plant, as well as houses around it.

"With the explosions, the whole street lifted up," she told ABC News. "It was like a massive bomb went off. It demolished both my houses -- my mother's and mine."

"I think everything around us is pretty much just gone," she added, according to ABC News Radio.

Keith Williams, a local resident, said his house also was destroyed.

"All the ceilings are out," Williams said, according to ABC News Radio. "The windows are out. The brick's knocked off the house. My big garage out back is half blowed in."

He also saw "people with all their houses tore up across the street from me, on each side of me."

By 5:45 a.m. ET, hospitals near the blast site reported treating 180 people. At least 16 patients at the hospitals were in critical condition and 3 in serious condition.

Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center in Waco, Texas, saw more than 100 of the wounded, officials there said. Patients from the blast also were confirmed early Thursday at Providence Healthcare Network in Waco, Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and Scott & White Memorial in Temple, Texas.

The fertilizer plant exploded around 7:50 p.m. local time Wednesday, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Emergency response audio told the story of the chaos among firefighters and others at the scene.

"We need every ambulance we can get this way," said one snippet. "A bomb just went off. It's pretty bad."

"Firefighters down," said another. "There has been an explosion."

"The rest home has been seriously damaged. We have many people down. Please respond."

There were subsequent explosions around 10 p.m., ABC News affiliate WFAA reported. The cause of the explosions was unconfirmed, but a dispatcher was heard warning crews to move away from chemicals in unexploded tanks.

Though most fires were contained early Thursday, officials said, they continued to burn.

"It was smoldering still and it still is active," Wilson said around 1 a.m. ET. "You know other ingredients [are] at the facility, so we don't want that to explode again. So right now we can't get firefighters in there. We're worried about people right now, not property.

"We're gonna go back in and do another house-to-house search and see if anybody else, victims, are in the houses," Wilson said. "That's going to be going on all night."

I was at work when it happened. Just before 8pm I was helping a customer when we heard the forceful boom....the front windows rattled so hard I thought they might shatter. The guy said that he guessed our rain was moving in early but I told him that sounded more like an explosion. He left and within a few minutes the state highway in front of the store filled with flashing lights as first responders raced to West.They came from all over the state and were so many that they finally had to reluctantly turn some away. The blast was heard all the way from Ft.Worth to Austin. I think the entire West Volunteer Fire Dept. went down....the devastation is massive in this tiny neighboring community. People started calling to see if I'd heard anything and a few folks straggled in with bits of news. I felt sick.....truly sick. God be with everyone involved.

Too true, about it being a bad situation. This is the first I have heard of it, though I live just 90 miles, give or take, north of the blast. 5 deaths are bad. 15 deaths are worst. We rue any deaths that have occurred, but let us hope that the death count is nearer to 5 than 15. And while it is being investigated as a crime, at this time, with all the explosive chemicals used to make fertilizer, it is also equally likely that it was just a tragic accident. Our prayers go out to all involved.

Kevin and I must be closer together than I thought - I'm also about two hours or so north of the blast. Latest I have read this evening says the death toll may be between 40 and 45. It was a horrendous blast.

One thing that makes me right proud of my home state is how fast and how large the group of volunteers has been to help out this little town. The outpouring of aid and prayers is so reassuring. I love Texas!

Kevin and I must be closer together than I thought - I'm also about two hours or so north of the blast. Latest I have read this evening says the death toll may be between 40 and 45. It was a horrendous blast.

Just an update, the last I heard was the final death count was 14, and as I said previously, while we rue the loss of life, it could have been so much worst, as they reckon 20% of the town was destroyed or heavily damaged. And the timing of the fire could have been so much worst. There was a middle school in the area of the blast, and if the blast had occurred, when school was in session . . . ? As it is, the school is so heavily damaged, that they have to bus the students, for the rest of the school year, and maybe next school year, to another middle school out of the area.

I am sure I must have passed through the town, at one time or the other, on the way to somewhere else. Even so, I do worry about the town's future, because like so many small towns in Texas and elsewhere in the U.S., it was apparently an one industry town, and with their one industry shut down for who knows how long, those towns have the habit of just dieing on the vine. We can only hope that is not in the future for this town.

West is on I-30 between Waco and Austin. It is best known to travelers for the amazing kolaches sold at one of its little bakeries that faces the interstate.

Mmmm....good stuff!

Even better....

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If it's true what they say, that GOD created us in His image, then why should we not love creating, and why should we not continue to do so, as carefully and ethically as we can, on whatever scale we're capable of?

The choice is simple; refuse to create, and refuse to grow, or build, with care and love.